


Settled in the Nest

by Anonymous



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: F/M, Post-Curse of the Black Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-28
Updated: 2009-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:13:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The important things to know are many.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settled in the Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a present for [Melusina](http://fabu.livejournal.com)'s birthday in 2005.

The important thing to know about Jack Sparrow is that he has no interest in the niceities of civilisation. Civilisation takes place on dry land, and Jack Sparrow has no interest in anything even remotely pertaining to dry land.

Of course, this doesn't contradict another important thing to know about Jack Sparrow, that anything beautiful is an object worthy of his attention, and by "object worthy of his attention," I mean, of course, that he will steal it, unless (or even if) there is a reason not to.

Elizabeth Turner reflected on this not-very-endearing quality of her friend (and sometime lover) when he appeared in her sitting room one raw, damp October day. The bay was full of fog, and the shrieks of the little pale sandrunners and the yellow-beaked gulls were indistinct against the walls of her house.

(Her father had refused to allow her to move into the three rooms above the forge, and Will had equally refused to move into the Governor's mansion; Elizabeth had briefly feared the argument would scuttle her marriage even before the ceremony, but Wetherby Swann had learned fairness, if not justice, during his office of the crown, and given in—not gracefully—granting his consent to Will's purchase of a small, grey-shingled, beachside house. Elizabeth had loved it on sight, and they named it the Nest.)

How Jack Sparrow knew of the Nest was not a question she bothered to ask herself. It was enough that he was there, sprawled in the chair that faced the window, one leg slung over the arm, sand clinging to his boots and ground into the carpet. Of course, he was eying her tea set (a wedding gift from Commodore Norrington) covetously, but he was there and he brought the scent of the sea with him.

She poured pale golden water out of the teapot's spout in a shining arc, filling the cup only halfway, and put the pot down into its cosy. "Love, I know you're not a stingy woman," Jack began, but she crouched next to his chair, and he fell silent, his eyes going wide. It took a moment of her hands scrabbling underneath before he realized she was not going to kiss him the way she had all those months before, and then he sat up to peer either down her dress or at her now-dusty wrists and sleeves and the bottle emerging, clutched in her hands. "Elizabeth Turner, have I told y'recently that I love you?"

"Jack, you've never said you love me," she said, going back to her chair, glad for the moment when her face was turned aside.

"Oh, I do. Deeply. Reverently. Ecumenically. Grammatically," and he went on, his eyes flicking between her face and the tea set and the bottle in her left hand. The rum was the colour of Will's eyes, and the steam rising off the tea carried the thin scent of alcohol to her eyes, and she blinked, once, hard.

Jack drained the tea, and held onto the cup, the thin white lines of scars on his hands contrasting with the delicate pale green of the painted flower-stems on the cup. Wounds bloom around him, she thought. I bloom around him. "You can have the tea set, if you want it," she said, though she didn't know how she would explain its disappearance if James Norrington ever came to call again (if he would after Will's disastrous attempt at an apology over some argument they had had while she had been busy trying not to have undead pirates rape her).

"No," he said, and she felt a small shock run through her—Jack Sparrow turning down something beautiful?

"Want to remember it, and I can't do that if I have it. 'sides, it suits you. Rings true when you touch it, and nothin' I can take because it'd never be mine."

She put her cup down, her hands suddenly shaking.

He stood, and the beads in his hair clinked. He yanked one of them out, a pale red wooden one, chipped badly enough so she could see the narrow grain inside. "For you, darlin'," he said, and laid it on the rosewood table. He crossed to the door out to the windblown garden before she could say, "You're not leaving yet, surely?"

He turned his head and grinned, that madcap death's-head grin she loved so. "'Swhat I do, you know that."

"Pirate," she said, and smiled back.

"Anamaria said to ask the fish if it'll be a boy or a girl," he answered, as if she'd told him, as if she was even sure herself, as if that were the right and proper answer. Elizabeth sat in the Nest and watched the fog blow away all that afternoon, and when the sunset came, and the sea had a golden collar round its edge, she went and asked the fish, and didn't get a reply.

"The asking is the important thing," Will said sleepily into her hair that night, his breath whistling against her neck. The really, truly important thing about Jack Sparrow is that he is a thief and an uncivilised bastard and a pirate born and bred, full of contradictions and foolishness, but when he loves, he loves truly.


End file.
